Ergo JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHYAN OPEN ACCESS

On Predicting

FABRIZIO CARIANIUniversity of Maryland, College Park

I propose an account of the speech act of prediction that denies that the contents ofprediction must be about the future and illuminates the relation between predictionand assertion. My account is a synthesis of two ideas: (i) that what is in the future inprediction is the time of discovery and (ii) that, as Benton and Turri recently argued,prediction is best characterized in terms of its constitutive norms.

Predicting is widely believed to be a matter of making assertions (or assertion-like speech acts) about the future. Both pieces of that understanding are

questionable. Predicting is not essentially asserting, though it sometimes is; andthe contents of acts of prediction are not essentially about the future, though theyoften are. I propose a theory of predicting that captures its relation to assertingand also captures the sense in which it appears to essentially involve the future.

My discussion is structured around two puzzles. The subject-matter puzzle (§1)challenges the thesis that the contents of predictions must be about the future. Thespeech act puzzle (§2) concerns the relationship between predicting and asserting.I lead with them to establish the goal posts of the inquiry. With the puzzles onthe table, I identify the views of some fellow travelers who agree that predictionsare not essentially about the future: I consider (§3) the view that predictingrequires future discovery, and then (§4) a proposal by Benton and Turri (2014,henceforth B&T) to the effect that predictions are characterized by a constitutivenorm (analogous to, but weaker than, the knowledge norm for assertion). I arguethat each of these views captures something important about predicting andformulate an account that synthesizes their virtues (§5). It is distinctive of myproposal, and an important part of my argument, that the speech act of predictionis, in a sense, multiply realized: there are two different kinds of predictions,roughly lining up with those predictions that are also assertions, and those thatare not.

Contact: Fabrizio Cariani <fabrizio@umd.edu>

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The arguments to come require us to have minimally reliable heuristics fordetermining what counts as an act of prediction. I propose two, very rough,sufficient conditions: the first is that speech acts whose vehicle is a sentence of theform I predict that ... are predictions. Call these performative predictions. The ideabehind this terminology is to analogize predictions to promises, apologies, andother speech acts that are canonically executed by performing another speech act—for example by asserting, or, as Searle and Vanderveken (1985) prefer, by declaringsomething. The classification of predictions as performatives is supported bystandard tests for performativity such as “hereby”-insertion (Austin 1975), as in:I hereby predict that they will lose the match. And indeed, “predict” is standardlytreated as a performative verb, for example in Searle and Vanderveken (1985). Asa point of terminology, I say that the content of I predict that p is the propositionthat p—as opposed to the proposition that the speaker predicts that p.

Evidently, not all predictions are performative. One can predict that it willsnow overnight just by uttering the sentence it will snow overnight. More generally,one can predict that p by uttering a sentence that, in context, expresses theproposition that p (call these transparent predictions). How to recognize transparentpredictions? I propose the voiceover heuristic: individual speech acts are classifiedas predictions if we can felicitously imagine a voiceover continuation like thatprediction turned out to be right (/wrong). Some examples:

(1) A: this plane will land on time.voiceover: that prediction turned out to be wrong.

(2) B (staring out of a window): it’s raining.voiceover: *that prediction turned out to be wrong.

There might be predictions that are neither performative nor transparent, but ifso I set them aside.1

One last piece of ground-clearing before we begin in earnest. For this paper, Iset aside the theoretical meaning of “prediction”, as operative in claims like:

(3) Special relativity predicts that a twin in a high-speed rocket, as viewed byher Earth-bound sister, will have a slower-ticking clock.2

There are clear limits to how tight the connection between predicting and theoret-ical predictions can be. To start, theoretical predictions differ from speech actsin their ontological status. Speech acts are widely understood to be events and

1. It is an established point in speech act theory that we should be wary of linking speechacts with hard-and-fast principles connecting a sentence’s form and the force of its uses(Green 2017). So there might well be predictions that are neither performative nor transparent.However, none of the points below strictly depends on this distinction being exhaustive, andignoring this complication will streamline presentation.

2. https://physics.aps.org/synopsis-for/10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.120405

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endowed with the kind of structure that is distinctive of acts. In particular, quaacts, they are events that have an agent. It is for this reason, after all, that theycan meaningfully be said to be subject to norms—and in particular, to the sortof norms Benton and Turri (2014) and myself invoke in our respective characteri-zations. By contrast, theoretical predictions are not events, but propositions. Inparticular, the predictions of a theory T are some (but not all) of the propositionsthat T entails. As such, they have whatever ontology propositions have.3 If, forinstance, propositions are abstract objects (e.g., sets of worlds), then theoreticalpredictions are those very same abstract objects. This suggests that if a normativetheory of the speech act of prediction is correct, there is unified analysis thatcaptures acts of prediction and theoretical predictions.4

1. Predicting 6= Forecasting: An Easy Piece

Say that a forecast is a speech act whose content is entirely about the future.According to the future content hypothesis, predictions are forecasts in this sense.

Authors with disparate commitments and diverse backgrounds accept thefuture content hypothesis. According to Searle, prediction is an assertive (i.e., itsignals commitment to truth and has word-to-world direction of fit) with futuresubject matter:

The differences [...] between a report and a prediction involve the fact thata prediction must be about the future whereas a report can be about thepast or present. (1985: 6)

Sperber and Wilson follow suit:

[W]hat makes an utterance a prediction is that [the speaker] ostensivelycommunicates an assumption with a certain property, that of being abouta future event at least partly beyond her control. (1986: 245)

And here is Isaac Levi:

Prediction [...] can be understood to express full belief in the truth of someclaim about the future or a judgment as to how probable some conjectureabout the future is to be true. (2007: 1)

3. Of course, each act of prediction is also associated with a proposition—the content ofthe prediction. (Say that the contents of acts of prediction are S-predictions.) Unfortunately, theexistence of S-predictions is not enough to forge a tight connections between theoretical predic-tions and acts of prediction. Although propositions are involved in both cases, S-predictionscan, and theoretical predictions cannot, be characterized in terms of norms governing thebehavior of an agent.

4. There is room, however, to theorize about how these concepts are connected. I have aproposal on offer in Cariani (in press).

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The problem for the future content hypothesis is that some predictions are notabout future events. It is possible to make predictions that are entirely about thepresent or the past (see also Benton & Turri 2014: §2). Here are two cases whichillustrate two different ways in which predictions may concern past events.

(4) Steph Curry is about to take a free throw. Elena is watching the gameand says: “I predict he’ll make it”. But the game is actually on tape delay.Curry has already made the free throw.

(5) Simona takes a test at 9 AM, then leaves for vacation. The test is gradedinstantly but Simona has not let her friends know the outcome. One of herfriends goes on to say: “I predict that she passed”.

In the first case, the actual temporal reference seems to have been replaced bya “story-internal” temporal reference, as if the basketball game was a fictionendowed with its own temporal sequence. To illustrate, reading Dr. Zhivago, onemight predict that Yuri Zhivago will die—meaning that he will die by the end ofthe story. Yuri’s death is not in the future with respect to the predictor’s context;it is in the future within the timeline of the story. Perhaps prediction can operateon the basis of such a simulated timeline. If that is true, then (4) does not by itselfrefute a suitably modified future content view.

Things are different with (5). The speech act in (5) meets our sufficientconditions for qualifying as a prediction: it is a flawless performative prediction.5

Moreover, (5) is a more striking counterexample than (4), since here there is nosuggestion of futurity with respect to a surrogate timeline. What seems to have tobe in the future in (5) is the time at which the participants will receive conclusiveevidence on the question whether Simona passed (I consider an account thatbuilds on this hunch in §3).

For another example in this vein, imagine a classroom of preschoolers playinga game in which they have to guess, without looking, what object is inside abox. The teacher might ask: do you have any predictions about what is in the box? Astudent answers: it’s a toy car! The student made a prediction but nothing aboutthe subject matter of the prediction is in the future.

Our first puzzle then is: how should we conceive of prediction if not in termsof the future content hypothesis? The etymology suggests that predicting involvessaying something ahead of something else. Of course, that etymology might wellnot be worth taking seriously. But if it is, we might wonder what that somethingelse is, given that it’s not the content of the prediction that relates it to the future.

5. Note also that it is easy to imagine a simple variation on the story in (5) on whichSimona’s friend makes a felicitous transparent prediction.

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2. Predicting vs. Asserting

Onto the second puzzle: how are predicting and asserting related? Two conflictingideas spring to mind.

the subkind thesis: every act of prediction is also an assertion.the incompatibility thesis: no act of prediction is also an assertion.

A paradigmatic implementation of the subkind thesis is the idea that predictionsare assertions about future states of affairs. A paradigmatic implementation of theincompatibility thesis is the idea that prediction and assertion are incompatiblespeech acts that share some traits because they belong to a common genus.An example of this view is the idea, mentioned above, that there is a classof “assertives” that includes speech acts as diverse as asserting and guessing.Of course, acknowledging that they have commonalities is consistent with theincompatibility thesis.

One’s choice among such options is consequential for the theory of assertion.Several theorists express the intuition that the epistemic standards for predictionare weaker than knowledge (e.g., Weiner 2005; Williams 1994). If that is accepted,and if one accepts the subkind thesis, the standard for assertion must sometimesbe weaker than knowledge.6 Alternatively, a defender of the knowledge accountof assertion might feel tempted to ride this argument the other way around, andconclude that predictions cannot be assertions.

The subkind thesis cannot be right. This is shown by focusing on an inter-esting and under-appreciated datum involving performative predictions. Unlikeassertions, performative predictions can felicitously be followed by Mooreanprofessions of ignorance in the predicted proposition.7

(6) I predict that she will win but I don’t know that she will.

This is important because it is a fundamental characteristic of assertions that theycannot be followed by professions of ignorance.

(7) * She won but I don’t know that she did.

6. There are views of assertion on which the standard for assertion is context-sensitive andcan sometimes be knowledge, sometimes weaker than knowledge (Goldberg 2015; Levin 2008).In the main text, I have in mind a non-context sensitive knowledge norm.

7. A reviewer highlights, though not as an objection to this point, that it is bad to say:

(i) I predict that she will win but I don’t know that I predict that she will

This might be thought of as (mild) evidence that I predict that A is an assertion whose content isthat I predict the proposition that A. Of course, it is important to keep in mind the gap betweenthis and the further commitment of the subkind thesis, namely that a speech act whose vehicleis I predict that A predicts the proposition that A. It is this further commitment that is up forcriticism in the main text.

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Relatedly, performative predictions are permissible even if based on purely statis-tical evidence. In a fair lottery, one may felicitously utter I predict that my ticketwill not win. But one may not outright assert my ticket will not win.

The upshot is that performative predictions fail to satisfy two important teststhat are plausibly requirements of assertion. Such tests are often leveraged in sup-port of the knowledge account of assertion (Williamson 2000). But accepting thetests as diagnostics for assertion does not require commitment to the knowledgeaccount.8 All that is required is that assertions be incompatible with professionsof ignorance, however that incompatibility might be explained, and that they bedefective if made on the basis of purely statistical evidence. Given that sentenceslike (6) are felicitous, that they are predictions, and that their felicity does notexploit specific features of context, we must conclude that some predictions arenot assertions.

It is no doubt possible to resist this argument by insisting that the tests are notrequirements of assertion. The ensuing dispute would be partly terminological.Although I am not authorized to issue fines to those who delimit assertiondifferently than I do here, there is a theoretically valuable class of speech actsfor which the tests are diagnostic. Referring to the class of speech acts that ispinned down by these tests as “assertions” is, in my view, a, legitimate way touse the term. With that said, this argument can be extended by noting that thereare related contrasts involving other concepts:

(8) I predict that she will win but I am not committed to that (/I am notcertain/she might not).

(9) * She won but I am not committed to that (*/I am not certain, */it might bethat she did not).

These asymmetries are pervasive and distinguish performative predictions fromordinary assertions on a broad variety of views about assertion, including com-mitment views in the style of Brandom (1994), and context update views in thestyle of Stalnaker (1978).

The failure of the subkind thesis should not be taken to support the incom-patibility thesis. In fact, I think the incompatibility thesis is also false: acts oftransparent prediction have all the hallmarks of assertion. Of course, defendersof the incompatibility thesis would agree that there are important similaritiesbetween predictions and assertions, but still insist that they are different—recallthe analogy with distinct species sharing a genus. However, if the incompatibilitythesis were true, transparent predictions would have to lack some of the criticalfeatures of assertion. The problem for the incompatibility thesis is that they

8. Proponents of truth norms of assertion often agree with Williamson about such data andseek to account for them with different resources. See, for example, MacFarlane (2014: §5.5).

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don’t. For example, Benton (2012) argues that the key diagnostics that support theknowledge account of assertion also apply to transparent predictions. In particular,Moorean profession of ignorance is just as bad with transparent predictions as itis with past-directed assertions like (7).

(10) * She will win but I don’t know that she will.

Weiner (2005) insists that predictive assertion is compatible with such Mooreandenials. However, at the critical point in Weiner’s argument in which Mooreandata are discussed, it is clear that he has performative predictions in mind:

Suppose that after Aubrey asserts [that the French will attack at nightfall]Pullings asks, “How do you know that the French will attack at nightfall?”and Aubrey responds, I don’t know they’ll attack at nightfall—we haven’tintercepted their orders-but my prediction is that they will. (Weiner 2005: 235,square brackets are my insertions)

Performative predictions are not probative in this context, since our question isprecisely whether transparent predictions behave like them or in some other way.In sum, Benton’s observation that (10) has the distinctive badness of Mooreandenials seems strong and it is admitted into evidence as far as this paper goes.

This behavior of transparent predictions also sharply distinguishes them from“hedged assertions” (Benton & Van Elswyk 2020) as illustrated by:

(11) She won, I think, but I don’t know for sure.

There is no reason to think that assertions about the future have to be hedged, andtheir incompatibility with Moorean denials helps emphasize that.9

Transparent predictions also behave like assertions in other important respects.As with assertions, it is defective to make transparent predictions only on thebasis of statistical evidence. While Williamson (2000: 245) relies on past-directedexamples (like your ticket did not win), it is just as bad—Weiner’s (2005) intuitionnotwithstanding—to assert your ticket will not win on purely statistical evidence,absent any sort of hedge or special contextual cues to the effect that one is flouting

9. A reviewer identifies a much more promising way to appeal to hedged assertions.One might think that (i) performative predictions are hedged assertions and (ii) what I called“transparent predictions” are simply ordinary assertions. This proposal innovates over much ofthe literature I engage with here by obviating the need for a special theory of prediction. I havesome credence in the first claim: while its development would be very different from what is tofollow, there would be important connections between the resulting theories. I am much lessconcessive about the second claim. My discussion is founded on the strong intuition that somepredictions involve no explicit hedges, nor any markers of performativity—not even ones thatare inherited from the surrounding context. This judgment may not be universally accepted,but it is a sufficiently clear and strong judgment to warrant theorizing on it.

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the norms of assertion.10

Taking a more general perspective, it would be bizarre if there was a concep-tual barrier whereby simple declarative sentences such as it will rain just couldnot be used to make assertions.

I said that there would be a puzzle at the end of this discussion, and so farnot much seems puzzling about these observations. Taken together, they guideus towards a surprising conclusion: performative predictions are not assertionsand transparent predictions typically are assertions. Hence, there is no uniformrelation between predictions and assertions: they are independent speech acts,in the sense that a single act can be both, one, or neither. I think this is thecorrect moral and, yes, not much of a puzzle, in light of the observations. Butthe observations are puzzling because not everyone will find this view congenial.Moreover, they do guide us towards an outstanding puzzle: how should weunderstand the speech act of prediction so that it’s distinct from assertion butalso such that it’s clear that one and the same act can be both a prediction and anassertion?

3. The Future Discovery View

The key case I relied on in rejecting the future content hypothesis immediatelysuggests an alternative view. I repeat the case here with its original numbering:

(5) Simona takes a test at 9 AM, then leaves for vacation. The test is gradedinstantly but Simona has not let her friends know the outcome. One of herfriends goes on to say: “I predict that she passed”.

The most distinctive feature of (5) is that, although the time of the event is in thepast, the question whether Simona passed isn’t settled until a time that followsthe prediction. That fact appears to play an important role in explaining why thefinal utterance in (5) is a prediction.

We could stretch this insight into a view (NB: not my view). The discovery viewagrees with the future content view that there is a future element in prediction.However, it diverges because it claims that what has to be future in a predictionthat p is the time of discovery—that is, the time at which the question whether pis settled. Here is a slightly more precise statement.

The Future-Discovery Account of PredictingA speech act a with content p is a prediction if and only if

10. Quick dialectic check: though I am using Weiner as a foil, he would agree that theincompatibility thesis is false and that transparent predictions are assertions. However, thereasons I am offering for that are strictly incompatible with Weiner’s outlook. He doesn’t takeincompatibility with Moorean denials to be diagnostic of assertion.

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(d0) a is an assertive.(d1) the truth value of p is not settled by the evidence that is collectivelyavailable to the participants to the conversation.(d2) the question whether p will be settled by forthcoming evidence.

It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to analyze the phrase “settled by evidence”as it occurs here. Still, without attempting to define it, we can try to illuminateit. Belief states are often viewed as closing off inquiry on some subject matter.According to this view, acquiring a belief that p is relevantly similar to adopting aplan: it involves some degree of close-mindedness about further deliberation onp (Friedman 2019). In the belief case, this close-mindedness is only appropriatewhen one’s evidence is strong enough to warrant closing deliberation. So, tomake sense of what it is to be “settled by evidence”, we can think in terms ofwhatever level of evidence is strong enough for someone to acquire that warrant.

Setting aside the details of how this insight could be developed, it is evidentthat the discovery view classifies the speech act in (5) as a prediction. It has thefeatures of assertives (commitment to truth, and word-to-world direction of fit),and it meets d1 and d2. The collective evidence leaves it open whether Simonapassed the test, and it is reasonable in the provided context to take it for grantedthat the conversational participants will find out whether she did indeed pass. Asimilar treatment also applies to the preschool object-in-a-box example: when achild answers it’s a toy car!, she counts as making a prediction because the currentevidence does not settle the contents of the box and because the class will soondiscover what is in the box.11 Surprisingly, the discovery view even accountsfor the tape delay example in (4), without any additional assumptions involvingsurrogate timelines. What makes Elena’s speech act a prediction is that the time atwhich the relevant conversational participants will find out whether Steph madethe freethrow is in the future.

Benton and Turri object that the discovery view—which they interpret some-what differently than I do—attaches the wrong subject matter to predictions.

The primary problem with the [Discovery] view is that it mischaracterizeswhat our predictions are about. When we make the prediction, ‘Bostonwill win the series in five games,’ it doesn’t seem to us that we’re making aprediction about what we’ll learn about the outcome of the series. Rather,it seems to us that the truth of our prediction depends solely on theoutcome of the series. (B&T: 1861)

B&T are correct in emphasizing the importance of subject matter. However, not

11. This example also helps illuminate why condition d1 needs to refer to the collectivelyavailable evidence, as opposed to the individual evidence: suppose that one child alreadyknows what object is in the box because she peeked ahead of time; when she says it’s a toy car!her utterance should still count as a prediction.

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every version of the discovery view gets the subject matter of predictions wrong—and specifically the view in d0-d1-d2 doesn’t. The versions of the discoveryview that are affected by B&T’s objection claim that I predict that it will rain isapproximately synonymous with I predict we’ll discover that it will rain. However,we do not have to spell out the discovery insight in this way. Future discoverymight be a necessary condition for predicting, without it being reflected in thecontent of the speech act.

B&T advance a second, independent objection:

Late in life, Edwin Hubble lobbied for the Nobel Prize Committee to makework in astronomy eligible for the Nobel Prize in physics. At the time ofHubble’s death, the Committee hadn’t re-classified work in astronomy.Suppose that on his deathbed Hubble said, ‘I predict that the Committeewill make work in astronomy eligible for the Nobel Prize in physics.’Hubble’s prediction isn’t falsified by the fact that he died before learningthat the Committee did re-classify astronomy. (B&T: 1861)

B&T’s reasoning is that, according to the future discovery view, Hubble’s speechact counts as a prediction only if Hubble got to find out whether the Nobel Prizereclassified astronomy. But he did not get to find out, so his speech act does notcount as a prediction.12

This objection succeeds against versions of the discovery view that make ita necessary condition that the speaker will find out. But, here again, we must becareful to note that it does not strike against every version of the discovery view.The discovery view formulated above—though somewhat vague about what it isfor evidence to be forthcoming—does not state this requirement. It only demandsthat the question be answered at some point relative to some body of evidencethat is suitably related to the community in which the prediction takes place.

With that said, there is an immediate generalization of B&T’s second objectionthat targets every version of the discovery view that includes a constraint like d2.Some predictions concern events that future evidence is not guaranteed to settle.Here is an example borrowing from an unrelated discussion in Dummett (1959):

(12) A city will never be built here.

If a city is built on the relevant spot, someone will indeed find out. But if no cityis ever built on the relevant spot, no one will find out.13 Despite that, someone

12. B&T say that the prediction isn’t “falsified”, but I think it is not charitable to interpretthem to mean this. Whether the prediction is true or false is not at issue here. What is at issueis whether the speech act is to be classified as a prediction. The reason B&T talk about theprediction being “falsified” is that they interpret the discovery view as claiming that I predictthat p entails I will discover that p. I have already objected to that part of their view, but I thinkthe present objection is instructive when reinterpreted along the lines that I do here.

13. The case might be spelled out so that someone can find out even if no city will never be

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who uttered (12) ought to be counted as making a prediction—both by directintuition and by the voiceover test.

The generalization in the neighborhood is that predicting that p does notrequire that it be settled that the question whether p will be conclusively answeredat all. It does not have to be settled for the speaker; not for the addressee; and notfor anyone else.

Another, related, reason for concern is that some predictions target conditionalclaims.14 Consider the statement:

(13) If we put cats on a spaceship, they would find a way to survive.

The discovery view fails to classify conditional predictions as predictions, and forthe same reasons why it fails on potentially unsettled predictions like (12). Namely,it cannot be settled that the question concerning the content of the prediction willbe answered, After all, conditional predictions weigh on conditional questions,and if the antecedent of the conditional question is not satisfied, then there is noexpectation that the conditional question will be conclusively answered.

4. Normative Views

Benton and Turri leverage their criticisms of the future content and future dis-covery views into an alternative account. They maintain that the speech act ofprediction is characterized by its constitutive norms—drawing on Williamson’s(2000) defense of the knowledge account of assertion. In particular, predictions arecharacterized by a norm that requires the speaker’s credence to have a particularkind of structure and a particular relation to the speaker’s evidence.

4.1. Formulating Normative Accounts of Prediction

Williamson characterizes assertion in terms of core rules (the “constitutive rules”),on the basis of an extended analogy between the rules governing speech actsand the rules governing games.15 Following and expanding on Unger (1975),

built on the spot in question. What matters to my argument is that the case can also be set up sothat no one will find out.

14. I say “predictions of conditional claims” instead of “conditional predictions” becausethe latter might be interpreted on an analogy with conditional assertion, which I do not intendto discuss here. A conditional assertion is an assertion that is made under a condition. If thecondition is not satisfied, no assertion takes place (for a recent discussion of the theory ofconditional assertion, see Goldstein 2019). By analogy, a conditional prediction ought to be aprediction that is made under some condition, so that the condition is not satisfied no predictionhas taken place. It is an interesting question whether there are conditional predictions in thissense, but not one I will tackle here.

15. Williamson appropriates the phrase “constitutive rules” from speech act theory (e.g.,Searle 1969), but emphasizes a critical respect that is underappreciated in the speech act theory

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Williamson suggests characterizing assertion as the unique speech act whoseconstitutive rule is:

Knowledge account of assertion: one may assert p only if one knows p.

B&T follow a similar playbook in their normative account of prediction. Accordingto them, prediction is the unique speech act subject to:

Proper expectation rule for prediction: one may predict p if and only ifone properly expects p.

It is interesting and unusual that B&T state their norm in terms of a biconditional.It is standard protocol to state norms for speech acts as necessary conditions forpermissibility—not as necessary and sufficient ones. The reason for the protocol isthat if the force of the permission modal may is left unspecified, a performance ofa speech act might be classified as impermissible for reasons that have nothingto do with the constitutive norms for that speech act. Having acknowledged thispoint, however, it’s reasonably clear what B&T have in mind. They mean, asfar as constitutive requirements go, proper expectation is the only standard: onemay predict p only if one properly expects p; any other form of impermissibilitymust result from violations of principles that are not constitutive of prediction.To see why this might work consider an analogy: the game of chess could becharacterized in terms of a biconditional pinning down the set of permissiblemoves at any point in a game. Such a biconditional might not rule out rudebehavior. But it would not follow from that that rude behavior is permittedduring chess matches. The job of the biconditional is to pin down permittedbehavior only as far as far as the rules of chess go.

Perhaps the most urgent clarification concerns what it is to “properly expect”something. According to B&T, the mental state of expectation is primitive. Theygloss it as follows:

canon. For Searle, a constitutive rule r for practice π is such that if r is not obeyed thenparticipants are not engaging in π. On this conception, constitutive rules both define a practiceand state necessary and sufficient conditions for it. Williamson emphasizes that there is criticalconceptual space between defining a practice and stating necessary and sufficient conditionsfor it.

Constitutive rules do not lay down necessary conditions for performing the constitutedact. When one breaks a rule of a game, one does not thereby cease to be playingthat game. When one breaks a rule of a language, one does not thereby cease tobe speaking that language; speaking English ungrammatically is speaking English.Likewise, presumably, for a speech act: when one breaks a rule of assertion, one doesnot thereby fail to make an assertion. One is subject to criticism precisely because onehas performed an act for which the rule is constitutive. (Williamson 2000: 240)

Williamson is right. The “travel” rule in basketball is part of a rule-based definition of the gameof basketball. But if a player travels during a game, they are still playing basketball.

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(mere) expectation is a mental state of slight commitment, which requiresregarding a proposition as more likely than not. (B&T: 1862)

One expects properly when one’s expectations are, in some sense, sanctioned ascorrect by one’s evidence.

One’s mere expectation that p will be ‘proper’ when one’s credences areapportioned to one’s evidence, namely when one’s evidence makes p morelikely than not-p. (B&T: 1862)

It is particularly instructive to understand how B&T’s proper expectationnorm relates prediction to assertion. As they highlight (B&T: 1865), the properexpectation account makes it possible for there to be overlap between predictingand asserting. At the same time, the proper expectation account also explainswhy not all predictions are assertions: predicting is a game that can be playedfor a cheaper price than asserting (i.e., by subjecting oneself to lower epistemicstandards). In some contexts—when the information about the most urgentsubject matters does not quite meet the epistemic standards for assertion—aspeaker might wish to play the cheaper game only.

The proper expectation account threads nicely through our motivating puzzles.It does not demand that the contents of predictions be in the future, so it canaccount for the evidence that doomed the future content view. And it does notdemand that future discovery be on the horizon. For that reason, it is immune tothe criticisms we raised against the future discovery view. Someone who predictsthat a city will never be built on this spot might well possess evidence that favorsthat claim over its negation.

4.2. Evaluating the Proper Expectation Account

Though the proper expectation account marks a striking advance in our under-standing of prediction, there are some problems for it that make it desirable tolook for a refinement.

Consider first what the proper expectation view predicts about present-directed certainties. Suppose I am staring out of my window and I see heavyrain. Obviously, I meet the conditions for properly expecting that it’s raining.The credences that are appropriate to my evidential state all favor raining overthe alternatives. But it does not seem plausible to say that I can predict thatit’s raining.16 The attempted performative prediction I predict that it’s raining isinfelicitous (or, in the right context, an attempt at a joke). I can, of course, assert

16. This case is reminiscent of a case discussed in von Fintel and Gillies (2010) to illustratethe evidentiality of epistemic must. Despite the different theoretical domain, there seems to bea connection between the requirement of “indirectness” that von Fintel and Gillies discuss formust and the parallel requirement that appears to be operative in prediction.

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that it’s raining; but in this case the voiceover heuristic suggests that I’m not, afterall, predicting.

(14) A: It’s raining.voiceover: *that prediction turned out to be right.

B&T gesture towards an account of the infelicity of such predictions within theirtheory. They propose that there are strength relations between speech acts thatare somewhat parallel to strength relations between contents. It is a basic Griceanpoint that (cooperative) assertion is governed by a “assert-the-stronger” rule. Itcan be defective (because uncooperative) to assert that one believes it’s rainingwhen one knows it’s raining. Similarly, assertive speech acts might be governedby a “perform-the-stronger” rule.

If you’re going to perform an assertive speech-act, you should performthe strongest assertive that your evidence permits (and no stronger).

So, the account goes, I cannot predict that it’s raining because I can assert that it’sraining. Because assertion is the stronger (i.e., more demanding) assertive speechact, that’s what I should perform.

This reasoning fails for two independent reasons. To start, “perform-the-stronger” only operates as B&T expect it to when it applies to incompatiblespeech acts—speech acts that cannot be performed simultaneously. Part of whatmotivates the “assert-the-stronger” rule is that any one assertion can only bean assertion of one content. But it is a key claim of the present discussion thatprediction and assertion are not incompatible: one and the same speech act canbe both. Since they are governed by compatible constitutive rules, there is nometaphysical or normative barrier to performing an act which is subject to bothsets of rules.

Perhaps B&T presuppose that, though they are governed by compatible con-stitutive rules, one can never perform both speech acts with a single event ofutterance. But I don’t see a reason to accept this. Two basketball teammates mightengage in a competition about who can score more free throws with their off handduring a professional game. If so, their free throws would be simultaneously sub-ject to both the rules of basketball and to the rules of their game-within-the-game.Indeed, this point is familiar from the theory of speech acts itself. A mainstreamview of performative utterances, such as I promise to clean my room is that theyinvolve two, overlapping speech acts: a promise to clean my room and anotherspeech act such as an assertion, or a declaration, that I promise to do so (Searle &Vanderveken 1985: 4 and, more extensively, Ch. 7).17

17. A reviewer notes that an interesting theoretical perspective on this point emerges fromthe “semanticized” analysis of performatives in Condoravdi and Lauer (2011). Condoravdi and

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A second problem with B&T’s account of why one cannot predict past andpresent certainties is that, much like the Gricean rules on which it’s mirrored,“perform-the-stronger” requires a cooperative context. As Mitchell Green (1995)notes, Grice’s Maxim of Quantity seems suspended in certain contexts of strategicconversation—for example, if I am testifying in a court setting.18 While thestrategic context still requires a substantial amount of cooperation, there need tobe no presumption that one be informative to the point that one must always assertthe stronger of two (relevant) propositions. The fact some inferences traditionallyassociated with the maxim of quantity still seem to go through in such contextsis evidence that they aren’t entirely based on the kinds of reasoning outlined byGrice.

Something similar should also hold of “perform-the-stronger”. Since therule is based on the insight that we should maximize the informative upshot ofour speech acts, it ought to be suspended in contexts that, for whatever reason,are less than fully cooperative. And yet it is still bad in such contexts to makepredictions about things that one is certain of. Even in the courtroom, I cannotpredict p when I and my interlocutors share direct, conclusive evidence in favorof p.

Reflecting on such cases leads to another concern for the proper expectationaccount. Though I have argued at length (and concur with B&T) that therecan be predictions about the past, their distribution is limited in ways that theproper expectation account does not address. One can predict past and presenteventualities only if there is some reason to believe that one will find out whatthat answer is. Suppose that, a few decades out of high school, I am looking atthe photo of a basketball team I used to play on back then. The photo remindsme of my teammate Sam—who used to be a passionate, committed player and aremarkable athlete. It is odd for me to say:

(15) *? I predict that Sam still plays basketball to this day.

The reason why this is odd need not be that I don’t have a proper expecta-tion. I may have excellent evidence that people with Sam’s skill, passion, andcommitment tend to stay active as players into their middle-age.

What I suggest is that the extent to which (15) is licensed depends on thedegree to which we have reason to expect direct evidence for it. This is thekind of phenomenon that the discovery view gets right. If we lack a reason to

Lauer make a strong case that performative utterances are in the first instance assertions. Onmy reading, however, Condoravdi and Lauer are generally neutral on the ontological questionwhether there are multiple speech acts associated with a performative.

18. See also Asher and Lascarides (2013). Furthermore, recent work in philosophy oflanguage, such as Camp (2018), draws attention to the fact that non-cooperative contexts areprobably the norm, and not outliers to be excluded from the analysis.

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expect that we will find out, (15) sounds bad. However, if we imagine modifyingthe context, so as to suggest that we will (or might) find out, the status of theprediction improves. So, for instance, suppose I am about to attend the twentiethyear reunion of the basketball team; I expect to learn about what Sam ended updoing. In such a context, (15) may well be a flawless utterance.

A third concern, which in the context of this paper I will leave somewhatvague, is that the proper expectation view says too little about the relation betweenpredicting and theoretical prediction. In (Cariani in press: §9.7), I explore theidea that if we accept the synthetic view, there are some links one can drawbetween theoretical prediction and the speech act of prediction. That accountof the connection between these does not generalize plausibly to the properexpectation account.

As a last remark about the proper expectation view, I note a point of detail.B&T say that an expectation is proper when the evidence supports p over ¬p.This is too strong. I can non-defectively predict that Spain will win the world cupwithout being willing to take them over the field. The norm does not capture this,since it requires my evidence to support the proposition that Spain will win morestrongly than its negation. The norm ought to be weakened so as to say that onecan predict that p as long as evidence supports having greater credence in p thanin the relevant alternatives. This observation is not an objection to the properexpectation account, since it can be addressed with an easy tweak. Instead, it isbest taken as a reason to redefine what counts as a proper expectation. Towardsthat goal, say that one properly expects that p when (i) one’s credence in p is greaterthan one’s credence in the alternatives and (ii) one’s evidence supports theseinequalities. In the remainder, I will use proper expectation in this more generoussense.

5. The Synthetic View

I propose an account of predicting that synthesizes elements of both the discoveryview and the proper expectation view.

5.1. Introducing the Synthetic View

Synthetic view. Prediction is the unique speech act A that is governed bythe rule that one may perform A with content p in context c only if:(s1) The contextual evidence in c does not settle whether p.

(s2) It is possible, as far as contextual evidence goes, that evidence that

settles the question whether p is forthcoming.(s3) One properly expects p.

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Both conditions s1 and s2 appeal to a notion of “contextual evidence”. This couldbe taken to be the common knowledge of the participants to the conversation.Alternatively, in a more flexible sense, it might be taken to be some body ofevidence that is salient in context. Under both conceptions, the contextual ev-idence is not solely determined by the speaker’s own epistemic state. In fact,under the flexible interpretation, there might be no connection at all between thecontextual evidence and the speaker’s evidence—roughly as in “exocentric” usesof epistemic modals (Egan, Hawthorne, & Weatherson 2005; Stephenson 2007). Iwill entertain both conceptions in the following, though I will use the commonknowledge interpretation as a default.

One point that deserves highlighting is that the sense of possibility in s2

should be a “thick” one. For every unsettled question Q, there is a smidgen ofepistemic possibility that Q will be settled in the future. So, it cannot be that anydegree of possibility is enough to meet s2. That would trivialize s2, since it wouldfollow that whenever s1 is satisfied, so is s2. Since we are already demandingsatisfaction of s1, s2 would be idle. For s2 to not be idle, the relevant senseof possible should be closer to seriously possible. I won’t attempt to analyze thisconcept of serious possibility, relying instead on general linguistic competence toevaluate individual applications of the theory.

It is possible to weaken clause s3 to the claim that one simply expects p,by dropping the propriety condition. There is a strong intuition here, whichs3 accounts for, that one ought not to predict against one’s evidence. However,that intuition might be accounted for by claiming that propriety is a normativerequirement on the mental state of expectation. It won’t matter to my analysiswhether we think of propriety as built into the analysis of the speech act ofpredicting, or as a separate requirement on mental states of expectation.

5.2. Evaluating the Synthetic View

The synthetic view threads with ease through the desiderata we accumulated upto this point. Recall from §3 that we took B&T’s first objection to demand that adiscovery-based account of predicting should separate the discovery componentfrom the content of the prediction. At that point, I noted that that can be ac-complished by letting future-discovery be a necessary condition of predicting andkeeping claims about discovery out of the content of prediction. The syntheticproposal also implements something similar to this blueprint, but in a normativesetting. According to the synthetic proposal, normatively correct predictions (i.e.,predictions that comply with the constitutive rules) require the possibility of fu-ture discovery. This means that we are twice removed from the original proposal:the synthetic view requires less (serious possibility of future discovery vs. guar-anteed future discovery). Moreover, the sense of “requires” is different. For theoriginal discovery view, future discovery was a necessary condition of prediction.

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In the context of the synthetic view, the relevant requirement is normative: thepossibility of future discovery is a requirement of permissible prediction.

The synthetic view also deals handily with B&T’s Hubble example. Futurediscovery need not be up to the speaker. All that has to be the case for something tocount as a prediction is that future discovery be possible in light of the contextualevidence. In §3 I noted some related challenges to the Hubble example. Forinstance, I noted that the naïve future discovery view fails in cases like predictiveutterances of:

(16) A city will never be built here.

The synthetic view handles this by merely requiring that evidence settling p mightbecome available. In the city case, we know that if the prediction is true we willnever find out. However, if the prediction is false, it is possible that the targetepistemic state will be informed about it. Very much the same treatment canbe extended to predictions of conditional contents. Suppose I predict that if Lizruns, she will win. It is typically not the case that we are guaranteed to find outwhether this prediction is correct. But all that the hybrid view requires is that thisbe possible. And indeed it is possible unless we are certain that Liz doesn’t run,or certain that if Liz runs she won’t win (in both of these exceptional cases, theprediction would intuitively be defective).

Discussion of such cases naturally draws attention to the status of thosepredictions that occur in contexts in which it is settled that we will never findout either way. Suppose, as a matter of fact, we will never find out either waywhether the number of stars is infinite and that it is common knowledge thatwe won’t. The synthetic view predicts that one cannot meet the norm when onepredicts that the number of stars is finite. A speaker might well be making aprediction, but they would be making a defective one. I take this to be the correctcharacterization of the case. It does seem that it is in some sense defective to makesuch a prediction, even if one had some evidence for it and if one apportionedone’s credence to the evidence in the correct way. The synthetic proposal explainsthis defectiveness without relying on any additional norms. Those who disagreewith me on this verdict, might still accept a version of the synthetic view thatscratches requirement s2.

Let us move on to the constraints I used to critique B&T’s account. First, Imentioned the case of present-directed certainties that are settled by one’s directevidence. I considered a case in which I am staring out of a window at a rainstormand noted that in such case I cannot felicitously predict that it’s raining. Thesynthetic view explains this as a violation of s1. Second, in the case of the highschool basketball photo, the prediction plausibly violates clause s2. In the initialversion of the case, we are not given any reason to expect that we will find out. Inthe variant in which we imagine that we are about to attend a reunion, we can

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felicitously perform the prediction. After all, it is now possible (indeed, likely)that we will find out whether Sam still plays basketball. In general, the syntheticview predicts, correctly in my view, that the appropriateness of predicting willcovary with whether there is enough reason to think that we will discover.

Let us stress test the synthetic view one more time. What does the view predictabout cases in which an agent wrongly believes that they violate the standardsfor prediction? Consider a small variant on Simona’s exam case; Simona’s friendLouise wrongly believes that her evidence settles that Simona passed. As ithappens, that is not true: Louise’s evidence does not settle that Simona passed.Louise says: I predict she passed. This utterance seems defective. But did Louiseviolate a norm of prediction? It would seem not: the synthetic norm is entirelyinsensitive to Louise’s beliefs on the matter. Here I think we should fall backon the idea of “secondary propriety” that is sometimes discussed in connectionwith norms of assertion.19 The idea is that our behavior (generally speaking) isgoverned by a meta-norm according to which, if an agent is subject to rule R,then the agent ought to act in such a way that they know, or at least have enoughevidence that, they do not violate R. For example, in a high-stakes basketballgame, it might be irresponsible to run too close to the side line, even if one isactually inbounds. As far as the rules of basketball go, of course, the only thingthat matters is whether the agent is inbounds or out of bounds. But as far asour overall evaluation of the agent goes, her walking too close to the line mightbe defective—perhaps even deserving of blame. In a similar way, it might beirresponsible, and thus defective, when one does not know that one is complyingwith the norm, and indeed Louise does not she is complying with the norm.

As a final point of evaluation, I do note that the synthetic view may besomewhat weakened to suit alternative theoretical frameworks. In recent papers,Mona Simion and Christoph Kelp have challenged Williamson’s “constitutiverules” approach to speech acts.20 According to Simion and Kelp, if some activityis governed by a set of constitutive rules, then an agent cannot systematicallyviolate a (significant) majority of those rules without being seen as ceasing toengage in that activity. But, they argue, one can violate the knowledge normsystematically and still engage in the practice of assertion. As examples, theyconsider a thinker who under the spell of an evil demon is made to be such thatthe near totality of her beliefs are mistaken. This hapless victim might still assertthings. However, their assertions would be systematically false. I have somedoubts about the success of this challenge,21 but the ecumenical point I want to

19. See Williamson (2000: 256–257), DeRose (2002), Weiner (2005: 236). Lackey (2007)argues against the idea of secondary propriety. I find Lackey’s arguments striking but notinescapable, though I won’t face the escaping challenge here.

20. Kelp and Simion (2020) and Simion and Kelp (in press). These papers draw on, andaim to strengthen, related arguments by Maitra (2011).

21. I think that the agent we imagine when we try to imagine someone whose beliefs are

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stress is that one can grant the challenge and still tell a story about constitutiverules in a lighter sense. This is exactly what Simion and Kelp do to make senseof the connection between knowledge and assertion. They propose that thegeneration and distribution of knowledge is an essential part of the function ofassertion. In this sense, it might be seen as “constitutive” in a lighter sense: it isessential to refer to knowledge in a specification of the good functioning of anasserting agent. This lighter sense of constitutivity is also a plausible fallback forthe synthetic view of prediction.

5.3. Predicting and Asserting

Where does the synthetic view leave us when it comes to the relationship betweenprediction and assertion? Suppose, for definiteness, that assertion is governed bythe knowledge rule. Then, prediction and assertion are governed by compatiblenorms, so that it is metaphysically and normatively possible for a single act ato be both. A fortiori, the same of course is true for norms that set standards forassertion that are weaker than knowledge.22

It is critical to this result that, even though someone who asserts p must knowthe content of their prediction, S’s knowing that p is compatible with there beingcontextual uncertainty about p—uncertainty of the sort that is required to licenseprediction. For example, if “unsettled by contextual evidence” is understood interms of compatibility with common knowledge, then all that is necessary for thenorms to be simultaneously satisfied is that (i) the speaker knows p (ii) but it isnot common knowledge that p among the conversational participants and (iii) itis compatible with common knowledge that an answer to the question whether pis forthcoming.

At the same time, the relative weakness of the synthetic norm explains whythere can be predictions that are not assertions (and in this respect it behaves inexactly the same way as B&T’s norm). In some contexts, the best one can do ispredict without asserting.

Acknowledgments

For correspondences, conversation, and feedback on this material, Sandy Gold-berg, Simon Goldstein, Megan Hyska, Christoph Kelp, Carlotta Pavese, GeoffPynn, Paolo Santorio, Mack Sullivan, Malte Willer, audiences at King’s College

nearly totally false is in fact not someone whose beliefs are nearly totally false. And if it was,very ordinary conversation with them would sound like conversations with bad chatbots.

22. This applies to all the weaker norms we have considered, specifically, the truth normadvocated by Weiner (2005), or the reasonable belief norm of Douven (2006) and Lackey (2007),or the context-sensitive norm of Levin (2008) and Goldberg (2015).

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London, and at Northern Illinois University, as well as my Fall 2019 graduateseminar. Also special thanks to two anonymous referees for Ergo whose commentshave greatly improved the paper.

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